Why do we have daylight saving time and when is it?

Nancy Shipley, Associated Press reporter, turns back the clock an hour in the AP office at The Tennessean Oct. 28, 1967 as Standard Time returns. Now folks can get back that extra hour of sleep after losing that hour when Tennessee went on Daylight Saving Time in April.(Photo: Dale Ernsberger / The Tennessean)Buy Photo

Credit — or blame — for the biannual shift goes back to Benjamin Franklin, who published An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light in a 1784 journal after he noticed that people burned candles at night but slept past dawn.

Under the act, states and territories can opt out of daylight saving. It isn't observed in Arizona (except the Navajo Nation), Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Daylight saving is observed in approximately 70 countries, including most of those in North America and Europe.

When does daylight saving end in 2017?

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At that moment (or the night before), the few analog clocks still around need to "fall back" an hour, turning 1:59:59 a.m. into 1 a.m. Since most of our computers, phones and DVRs do it automatically, it's not as much of a chore as it used to be.

Starting Sunday, that one hour of daylight is switched from evening to morning as standard time begins.

We don't go back to daylight saving until Sunday, March 11, 2018, about a week before spring begins.